Graham Butler sent along a series of screen images in advance of todays online meeting of the minds between Morph inventor Rory McCarthy, design and manufacturing engineering from Graham Butler, industrial designer Alan Ball, and design consultant and project manager Bill Warner.
Above is the initial frame design for Morph 4. Wow, that is looking great!
This image shows the metal frame model on the left. The red members provide the flanking design needed for Morph 4. The green area just shows the chain path...there won't be any "green thing" on the chains!
Rear view of the initial Morph 4 frame design.
Side view of Morph 4 initial frame design. Note that some of the wood structure is still shown for comparison on the front.
Wireframe shows the wood model.
The new frame will use an SNS coupler so the frame can be taken apart to fit in a car. This coupler requires steel or titanium, so this means the main tube will likely be thin wall chrome molly steel tubing. (Graham already uses this on his current handcycles.)
A closeup of the morphing arms. Not sure what these will be made of...probably aluminum. We're taking a cue from suspension mountain bikes, and we plan to use bearings on all the morphing joints, rather than bushings. Mountain bikes have moved away from bushings as they have been unreliable.
A closeup of the assembled morphing joint. I think there is a single bearing on each side, since there is a thru-axel.
Graham proposes using tie-rods for the automatic seat adjusters. This allows us to adjust their length to suit the user's preferences, and they already take care of 8 points of rotation at very low cost.
Tie rods under the rear portion of the seat bottom. These linkage cause the seat to move not with the main tube, but with the lower morphing arm. This provides the self-adjusting magic that make the Morph work just right.
How many joints? How many bearings?
Upper and Lower Link Arms : 4 joints, 8 bearings total
Forward seat tilt hinge, similar bearings to morphing joints? Thru axel? Probably 2 bearings.
Forward Seat Tilt Hinge: 1 joint, 2 bearings
Seat back articulation: Just above red link arm on the bottom is a rotation point for automatic seat tilt.
Seat Bottom Pivot: 1 joint (maybe this one is a bushing.) Just above red link arm on the bottom is a rotation point.
Total joints and bearings:
Upper and Lower Link Arms : 4 joints, 8 bearings total
Forward Seat Tilt Hinge: 1 joint, 2 bearings
Seat Bottom Pivot: 1 joint (maybe this one is a bushing.) Just above red link arm on the bottom is a rotation point.
Automatic Seat Tilt Tie Rods - 8 joints, 8 bearings
TOTALS: Joints: 14 joints total (sounds like a lot, but suspended mountain bikes have many also.)
Bearings: 18 (wow), 8 are in the tie rods, 10 outside of tie rods
Here is the e-Drawings file for the SolidWorks model: You'll need the free e-Drawings Viewer (for Mac or PC)